Doubledee [comrade/them]

oil prices are high because that’s what putin can use as leverage against the developed world after his failed annexation of Ukraine and it’s clear he’d rather die than accept Ukraine is an independent country.

… is this “Putin” in the room with us right now?

I like to think about the historical perspective. It’s not much consolation but systems like these can’t maintain themselves forever, cracks are showing and the US really is more vulnerable than people would like to admit.

Once things start changing there will likely be a lot of problems, things will probably get worse in some ways, but I think even if I don’t survive to see what people come up with in the aftermath of the US I can get satisfaction from seeing it burn.

When you read history you learn humans are very resilient, humans will not end when the empire does. Maybe the failure of this place will be good for the world.

I think there was a culture shock when federation first hit. We had a ton of ‘engagement’ from people who were using ableist, racist, and transphobic slurs, which brought out strong reactions from our community because we believe its important to shut that stuff down on solidarity with our comrades. And as things got heated I think our willingness to believe people wanted good faith debate eroded.

We do love a good dunking though, and I think overall the community has a lower threshold for going full pig poop balls on people than I would prefer.

Then why do it? You’re the only one in this whole thread with any issue, unless you can point to someone else who has had it. The most desperate form of deflection was using upvotes/downvotes as a point like populists always do.

But they aren’t the only person here with an issue. My comment wasn’t as confrontational but I also clearly raised a red flag at the question being asked and the reasons people start asking these kinds of questions. I also see what you’re doing. I just don’t want to spend the next week doing this thing you’re calling a debate.

Because the two things aren’t actually the same and because of what it means in context to oppose a culture vs. a cult. You might oppose scientology in a variety of ways, they have a leader, buildings, staff, bank accounts, a documented history of infiltrating the government and harassing people, a curated list of members etc.

A cult may or may not have all of those but they’re a different kind of thing than a culture. Cultures are social categories that encompass a much wider range of human behaviors for one, they include things like sport and art and language. Festivals and practices and food and manners. They’re things a human can’t really help having even if you can choose to adopt parts and change others. Religion, which is a thing you seem to be conflating with culture, is just a part of culture. Egyptian Copts have Christianity like many Americans. They are also very different culturally.

But the bigger reason people should be very careful when people start criticizing culture is because we know what that means. What does one do about “cultural Bolshevism?”

What do conservatives actually want done about “Black culture?” What did bringing “culture” to the “savages” mean? How does someone stop being from a culture?

We know how those questions get answered. And that tells us something about why those questions might be asked in the first place.

What the fuck even is this question? Is it a joke I don’t understand?

The postal service runs functionally craft unions that don’t negotiate together, Rural Carriers bargain separately from City Carriers, who also are separate from the APWU which covers clerks and maintenance folks. There are upsides to this, for Rural Carriers specifically it let them get certain contract items that would be a huge ask to get for other carriers due to the specificity of their job requirements, but it’s led to a problem where regular rural carriers are in a pretty unique bargaining position relative to virtually everyone else. Importantly, they’re also divided into full time regulars and part time RCAs, which I think creates an engagement problem. When I was an RCA I paid dues, but I rarely interacted with or cared about the union because it was pretty clear pretty quickly that the union was mostly concerned with the regulars who had been there a long time. It was likely to be upwards of 5 years before I became a regular (I knew people who had been working part time for 7 years) and almost all the perks and benefits were negotiated to benefit the regular carriers.

I think over time new regulars are becoming less engaged, especially since there have been recent changes to the craft that undermine a lot of the promises that were ostensibly the reason you waited in line to become a regular in the first place. So the leadership is getting increasingly detached from the actual workforce, and the union is already one of the smaller and weaker ones to begin with.

EDIT: A bigger problem which I probably should have mentioned to begin with is that all postal workers are legally barred from taking a strike. So the unions have something of a more collegial relationship with management than you’d like, because you can only play hardball so far before you run into legal trouble.