Q: So, we should just let it crash and burn down, pick up the pieces and I've encountered similar arguments to this throughout anarchist and other leftist cultural political groups and I always find them so deaf to the realities of people throughout the world. It's the leftist version of "let them eat cake". I doubt that many arab american muslims would share this view. It's all fine and well to encourage an apocalyptic economic and political crash when you think that your chances of surviving it are good, but tell the person receiving SNAP or TANF or living in section 8 housing that you want politicians to be elected who want to cut those programs. Tell women that you want politicians to be elected who will appoint supreme court justices likely to reverse roe v wade. Tell the person whose family is in Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or Yemen or Syria or Lebanon or Palestine or Pakistan that you want a politician to be elected who will escalate bombing and military actions in those countries. Tell the person whose parents are undocumented that you want a politician to be elected who has publicly advocated for a separation wall between the US and Mexico and has dog-whistled on countless occasions referring to immigrants from mexico, central and south america as rapists. I don't think that things are working out well for the globe (and for the internet) and I agree that rapacious capitalism is one of the primary forces of misery and hardship and pain across the world. Peter Sunde's analysis, while gloomy and lacking in any real solutions, is pretty spot on. But to suggest that the only way forwards is to embrace an inevitable catastrophe that will disproportionately affect the already disempowered, disenfranchised, and oppressed is to give up on humanity. If people like Peter Sunde welcome the apocalypse in this way, they will certainly not be looked kindly upon by survivors who disproportionately saw their friends, family, and loved ones perish in the revolutionary fires. We all have a duty - even when we feel the most gloom, when we want to watch the world burn - to suppress those more desperate feelings and emotions, imagine the world as a better place, and build the future we believe in. Which is not even to mention that the logic of the argument is just unsound. Trump's most recognizable historical predecessors are the opportunists in the nazi party who seized upon themes of economic populism and xenophobia to build the most terrifying right wing military government known to history. His election does not logically lead to a revolution in which things get better. It may be one possible outcome, but it's one of many, most of which lead to a future, the dismal nature of which we can only begin to comprehend. On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Mitar &lt;mitar(a)tnode.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mitar@tnode.com');>> wrote:

Yeah I mean I don't actually consider myself a reformist (in some circles that's even a fairly pejorative term), but I tend towards being interested in the creation of revolutionary change in the present. The autonomous spaces movement is one I think that embraces this kind of approach, even if some of its incarnations have been insular or exclusive or even mirrored the oppressive behaviors of society at large (some of the back to the land movements in particular). The Black Panthers free breakfast program is a good example of a theory of change that places revolutionary radical change within the framework of creating a better now. I think that example might also illuminate which groups might be less likely to want catastrophic change, considering their communities might be among the most hard hit. Max On December 12, 2015 8:49:59 AM PST, Benny Lichtner &lt;bennlich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: