CatGirl Kulak 😻😿 (Anarchonomicon) Profile picture
Jan 30 15 tweets 6 min read Read on X
🧵1/
Americans don't understand class. American socialists especially

Every week I hear: "How can Trump be considered anti-elite? He's a billionaire!?"

This fundamentally misunderstands class. it's not how much you have, it's how you make it.

And Trump definitely ain't elite Image
2/
Classic Marxist economics divides class via the individual's means of securing resources.

The proletariat trade their labour to employers for wages.

The bourgeoise use their ownership of the means of production to extract surplus value from the proletarian laborer, etc. Image
3/
Sure this usually resulted in the bourgeoise being wealthier than the proles.. but not always. Some decayed bourgeoise barely made more than proles, while many successful skilled proles earned as much as lower tier bourgeoise.

These were dubbed the labour aristocracy Image
4/
there was an intensive debate amongst socialists in Russia as to freed serfs, many of whom owned their own land (and owed a mortgage to their former masters), and whether or not these former serfs should be considered Proles or Bourgeoise.

Thus the peasant/kulak distinction Image
5/
The important thing to understand about the American Class system and the rise of "The Elite" as opposed to "the Bourgeoise" or "the Aristocracy"

Is the rise of prestige-generating institutions and their integration with governments. Image
6/
Universities, thinktanks, government departments, prestige media, NGOs, and non-revenue generating segments of fortune 500s have exploded in the past 50 years

All targeted at controlling political and regulatory outcomes via manipulation of institutional and social prestige Image
7/
A typical career for the modern elite is to do a master's or PhD at an elite university, a postdoc or internship at a thinktank, a few years at a media firm, get hired at a government department

then bounce back and forth between the government and the companies they regulate Image
8/
At every stage in their career their wealth is generated either by their attachment to institutions the government funds, or by their perceived ability to manipulate regulatory outcomes...

Trump by contrast is a classic American huckster who attracts hostile regulators Image
9/
Trump's career could not be more different than the modern American elite.

He generates his wealth through a blend of family business ties, real "free" market activity, and his extreme bravado-infused brand.

He's a man who sells board games of himself Image
10/
His entire brand is a crass rejection of the prestige elite. every effort they've put into seeming thoughtful, measured, or respectable he rejects

Trump is the Grifter's grifter... the Petite bourgeoise's ideals made flesh.

There's a reason rappers reference him so often Image
11/
Even his book "Art of the Deal" is infused with an ethos of getting away with something, of going into a negotiation and winning.

Any of these "thoughtful" "measured" "girl-bosses" would have written "The Dream of Compromise" about politics, not business
Image
Image
12/
But the economics of class are the real division.

The American elite almost never ventures outside of government-funded institutions except to collect tribute from the corporations they regulate. Image
13/
Trump by contrast is an old-school capitalist.

Sure a capitalist in the corrupt field of New York real estate... but a more or less productive person who had to make bribes to government officials... not a leech who sat back a collected bribes Image
14/
Notably, Trump is the only president in the past 40 years who will not be offered a teaching position at a university, nor be invited to the board of think tanks or Fortune 500s.

Unlike Obama he does not receive Wall Street speaking fees into the hundreds of thousands Image
15/
Trump is a man with more negative prestige than almost anyone else in US history. his currency amongst the governing elite approaches negative infinity.. yet he is one of the most potent political forces in America today.

This is not just a culture war, it is a class war. Image

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More from @FromKulak

Dec 15, 2023
50+% of 2010s feminism was white women bitching about black men, and then pretending they weren't

They'd bitch about catcalling or being approached in public, and then have to pretend they were really complaining about Michael complementing their shirt at the coffee shop


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"Why don't men stop this behaviour and intervene"... They cried all through the 2010s

Then when the white men they pretended to be complaining about actually did intervene... Image
There was even a phenomenon of Conservative or non-woke women who lived in all white areas replying "What are you talking about? I've never been catcalled. Men in America are incredibly respectful"

Then the feminists getting enraged because they couldn't give the obvious answer
Read 4 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
🧵Butterfly Kisses🧵
1/
Great Horror Fiction is Greek Tragedy... Told in reverse

As opposed to the oppressive build towards disaster, ghost stories, dark legends, detective stories... all come after the moment of greatest fear and try to reconstruct it

only to do so too well Image
2/

Bram Stoker was great at this...the book Dracula unfolds as a series of letters and documents... layer after layer peeling back to glimpse the fleeting horror, the writers painfully know words cannot convey. Image
3/

And H.P. Lovecraft truly mastered the form

the onioned layers of his story peeling back into a putrefying alien horror... as investigators trace investigators of investigators trying to track an eldritch truth they and the reader, now in the chain, know shouldn't be found Image
Read 17 tweets
Nov 15, 2023
Why would Hamas use a pre-existing/known tunnel network as their primary Command bunker in Gaza City?

Obvious that Israel will use it as an excuse and justification for their brutality, knowing its there...

But Anyone who's studied Vietnam knows you can't cripple an tunnelled in insurgency... certainly not in fewer than 5 weeks .. US couldn't in 5 years.
The Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam were 75 miles.

Hamas has 300+ miles of tunnels.

Even Adjusting to population 2 million Gazans vs 7 million Israeli jews, is very close to Vietnam vs US ratios.

This is analogous, indeed the US was better positioned to win in Vietnam
Read 6 tweets
Nov 14, 2023
🧵1/
Americans don't understand class. American socialists especially

Every week i hear: "How can Trump be considered anti-elite? He's a billionaire!?"

This fundamentally misunderstands class. its not how much you have, its how you make it.

And Trump definitely ain't elite Image
2/
Classic Marxist economics divides class via the individual's means of securing resources.

The proletariat trade their labour to employers for wages.

The bourgeoise use their ownership of the means of production to extract surplus value from the proletarian laborer, etc. Image
3/
Sure this usually resulted in the bourgeoise being wealthier than the proles.. but not always. Some decayed bourgeoise barely made more than proles, while many successful skilled proles earned as much as lower tier bourgeoise.

These were dubbed the labour aristocracy Image
Read 15 tweets
Oct 28, 2023
🧵1/
It's hard to grasp Nietzschean Master morality. In our sickly guilt-poisoned era the instinctual values of healthy ubermenchean man are almost entirely Alien

However, shockingly, America has produced a perfect artifact of healthy noble natural values:

The Disney Princess. Image
2/

The Disney Princess is the perfect archetype of easy natural inherent nobility and morality.

She is an artifact of inborn virtue, a born noble, irrespective of parentage.

With the naive careless values that come from an easy mastery of her domain Image
3/
From this metaphysical nobility (occasionally paired with political nobility) she is reduced to the lowest station, a servant, a wanderer, a cripple, an enlistee

Only for her innate nobility to reveal itself and for her to win her rightful station and an apex man with it Image
Read 19 tweets
Oct 24, 2023
🧵Why no one wants to Join the Military🧵

I've been reading "The Second World War" by Sandhurst military Historian John Keegan...

It explained a ton about 19th century/early 20th century military culture I didn't get.

The Edwardians were patriotic as hell. the Military was massively popular.

The Average person ate 1200 calories a day, whereas soldiers in Garrison ate 1400 and higher quality food at that, it was a massive education and networking opportunity for people of all classes, and produced bonds that would be necessary for social advancement.

Conscription was massively popular and demanded from the population during peacetime, less because they wanted to make sure no one was shirking, and more because they didn't want lower class people left behind and all the opportunity in the army horded by the connected who'd be able to get into a volunteer force.

In Britain which had always abhorred conscription and had Whig (proto-libertarian) objections to it... the populace practically rebelled and formed illegal regiments and militias and drilled to participate in martial life... this was a phenomenon across europe and after the treaty of Versailles restricting Germany to a scant 100,000 strong army, the country was flooded with Freikrops, non-government paramilitaries and militias to either advance some political movement or just be part of militiary life.

This was after WW1! Millions of young men had just died as part of regiments many little different than this. And yet there was this much demand from young men to be part of the martial world.

This is because the Military and military life was ACTUALLY a good career move, and ACTUALLY formed life long bonds in the early 20th century.

Amidst the population boom of the early 20th century and all the excess young men with little inheritance... the military and militia life was a major vehicle for social mobility and aspiration and forming social connections...

.

So what changed? Why is it almost completely the opposite in early 21st century America?

These attitudes survived the world wars, even the western front of WW1...

But they were devoured by Vietnam and the Civil Rights era.

Implicit in a lot of 19th and 20th century militarism was the vision of "Every Soldier a Citizen, Every Citizen a Soldier" this ethos was first expressed during the french revolution... It was aspirational. The subjects divorced from the state and military were now armed and able to participate in civic and military life, they were now citizens... of course by the early 20th century this sounds very menacing... Soldiers must obey orders, every day... if every citizen is a soldier, and bound to obey, on pain of death, that's Totalitarianism.

Indeed a friend recently said "You know the Weimar Republic may have been the only true democracy in history. We talk about how your vote matters and you're deciding your government, but really the public has little say. Barrack Obama vs. John McCain was literally the option presented to America, that was their spectrum of options... whereas Weimar Germany? They had Monachism, Liberalism, Communism, Fascism All RIGHT THERE on the Ballot, and any of them could win! And one of them did"

It wasn't a coincidence that this seeming pinnacle of democracy, exactly coincided with, and produced, the era when the most men were in uniform (and many women in Auxillaries)

The ethos of universal suffrage and universal conscription went hand in hand... with the contradiction it implies: Are you master of your country? Or is every other person in your country now master of you? Are you empowered with your rife to move the politics of europe? Or have you been enslaved to your state, people, and their fate?

One might think this is the source of the disillusionment, but America had conscription and its 1940s martial ethos through the 50s and into the 60s...

But of course there's a contradiction between UNIVERSAL suffrage and this masculine martial conception of the citizen... Why is the vote of a woman or disabled man who've never served equivalent to a man who's been taxed years of his life and often extraordinary risk and effort? How exactly does racial equality work when some groups are underrepresented in military life, or are perceived to be underrepresented in the most dangerous roles?

These Questions were papered over with discrimination.

"What did you do during the war?" was an interview question that made or broke your entire economic life in a world where a massive percentage of people had served... This was a massive inducement to do so, and indeed you could still hear concerns about "missing" a war in the 50s and being shut out of the aspirations and opportunities available to other "Luckier" cohorts of young men. Obviously even though there was little legal barrier to women fulfilling most corporate and professional roles, this fact of life was a massive barrier.

But then the 64 Civil Rights Act was passed and the logic of it necessitated Affirmative action to women, and underrepresented minorities, whilst at the same time a new generation of upper-middle-class young men, insulated by one of the most abundant and forgiving economies in world history were encouraged by family and friends to either avoid the draft with bogus medical excuses , hide out in university, or indeed dip out of the country for a spell...

And far from suffering a fatal blow to their career and social prospect for, what previous generation would have called, Cowardice... they were rewarded.

Military service became increasingly a marker of the lower class... and the Liberal Educated non-serving class, already critical of the war out of self-serving concern to not be draft... Latched onto tales of war crimes in Vietnam, often going so far as insulting and aspitting (literally or figuratively) on returning soldiers not wealthy enough to dip into university. There were no return parades, GI benefits were often non-existent (with some unable to healthcare for even Malaria (a disease a new yorker probably didn't catch at home))... And not only were they not given priority in employment, lacking both the right ethnicity and the university degrees which are the only qualifications protected from a disparate impact assessment... many fell to the bottom of the economic ladder.

America's Recruitment Capacity really has never recovered. Total US military personnel shrank from 3.5 in 1969, to 2 million in 1985 to 1.3 million today, even as the US population has increased from 200 million to 330 million.

America has gone from over 1% of the population actively serving at any one time to nearly a third of that.

The "Professionalization" of the US military to an "All Volunteer force" has in effect just been a cover for this collapse in recruiting capacity.

America's military isn't significantly structurally different. These aren't really professionals.

Your average 3 year contract private isn't making some obscene Yuppie amount of money for his ambitious professional commitment. A private makes under 30k a year. A Second Lieutenant, with a university degree and years of professional development, who may have had to plan out his career from 16 years old getting a Congressman's letter of recommendation to attend West Point or another service academy... Makes 40-60k a year.

US GDP per capita is 72k. If that Lieutenant had gone to a second tier school and gotten a Computer Science degree he'd be making 6 figures and have vastly more control over his life.

It's not a good career move, in the 1780s or 1900s and ambitious scion of a decayed noble family desiring to conquer the world might want to become an artillery officer... Today he wants to work on wall street or at Google.

Even if you're starting out from a very rough place there ar almost certainly a dozen better things you could do to advance yourself faster, for better money, and with less effort than joining the Military.

The only appeal of the US military, for decades now, has been to people who really want to escape their situation, who really felt they needed to hard reboot their life, or who are really drawn to military life out of sheer love of it.

And then the Army went woke.

Wokeness is toxic to the Army not just because of the values clash with most ordinary recruits... but it places front and center the entire dynamic that makes the military such an awful career path.

Not only are young men not enticed to join the military out of the knowledge that they're wasting years not getting a university degree, or that their Gender, skin colour, and sexual orientation are still going to count against them even once they're out... They're now having it declared to them that they'll suffer that distain and discrimination even in the military, incvariably by some fat university educated minority woman brought in to give a diversity lecture.

Even whilst you're serving the US government its going to rub your face in the fact that it's undermining you and your career... And it's somehow a mystery the army can't recruit?

The US Military is taking close to half of the people it took in the 1980s... and it still can't find anyone.

Meanwhile its not uncommon to hear in various forums open talk from active military that if the US military were used in an internat war against dissent by the Trumpenproletariat... They'd desert. Indeed Anonymous leaked US military wargaming projects something close to a 50% desertion rate in any major civil conflict.

And there's nothing to be done to save it. There's no will to double or triple pays to reflect GDP or what similar effort could get a person in the US economy (don't enlist, go Fracking or Alaskan crab Fishing) there's no political will to undo the bizarre system of racial and sexual patronage that benefits everyone except the productive class that drives the US economy... and there's no way any of the elite would recreate a world where military service was a better guarantee of job prospects and financial security than a university degree.

So America's effective recruitment capacity and civic feeling will continue to collapse even as Americans hate each other and their government even more.

You think recruit capacity is bad now? Wait til we have another war in te middle east.

At the Height of the Iraq war the US had to resort to "Stop-Loss" measures to keep soldiers in the service longer than their 3-4 year active contract window, and and stretch it out through their reserve status...

This "backdoor draft" not only zapped morale it immediately became a cause Celebre and a major motivator to not join the military and certainly to reconsider any desire to join the combat arms who were getting multiple deployments past the date they were supposed to be discharged, whilst many in less intensive occupations were getting out on time.

America was already in a perfect storm of demoralization... Imagine what it'll be in a years time after another war and another 2-3 trials of Trump
Image
Hey give me a follow.

My trafifc's been heavily supressed lately so you probably won't see anything from me unless you do
Oh correction:

The era when Civilians got 1200 calories a day vs. soldiers 1400, was at the bottom of the French revolution during the food shortages (1791-96) when this spirit began.

Not during the Edwardian period as I implied.
Read 4 tweets

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