Things to expect here

Panel one shows an anxious person with tattoos and piercings in a black shirt. Caption: “I used to worry that no one would ever find me attractive”

In panel two, a garage band performs in industrial setting. The singer, guitarist, keyboardist, and audience revel under a leaky pipe with spider webs. Caption: “But I figure I’m like a shitty basement ska show”

Panel three shows two people singing and playing guitar together. Caption: “Which isn’t as likeable as a lot of other shows”

Source: [x]

The minimum wage could actually drop if we had basic income.

And with this system, part-time jobs and “non-skilled” jobs would be much more readily available because nobody would need to work two or three jobs just to stay afloat!

Which would ALSO mean that employers and customers couldn’t shamelessly exploit employees the way they can today, because if losing a job weren’t necessarily a financial disaster, more people would be willing to walk out on jobs where they weren’t being treated with dignity.

And if this also applies to students (and it should) then student loans would become much less of a problem, and fewer people would flunk out of school because of having to juggle studies and work.

Far fewer people would be forced to stay with abusive partners, parents or roommates because they couldn’t afford to move out.

And the thing is, all those people who suddenly had money? They’d be spending it. They’d be getting all the stuff they can’t afford now - new clothes, books, toys, locally-produced food, car repairs - and with each purchase money would flow BACK to the government, because VAT, also income tax.

The unemployed and/or disabled wouldn’t need special support any more - which would also mean the government could fire however many admins who are currently engaged in humiliating - *cough* making sure those people aren’t getting money they don’t deserve. Same for medical benefits and pensions. And I’m no legal scholar, but I somehow imagine less financial desperation would lead to less petty crime, and hence less need for police and security everywhere?

But wait, there’s more. Because parents were spending just a little more time at home and involved with their families, test scores increased. Because teens didn’t have to work to support their families, drop-out rates decreased. Crime rates, hospital visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and domestic abuse rates all dropped, as well. More adults pursued higher education. Those who continued to work reported more job flexibility and more opportunity to choose employment they preferred.

No conservative militia would defend their black and brown neighbors against state violence. None of them lift a finger against ICE. They always defend the most repressive elements of the state, from the police to the army. They always make excuses for grotesque wealth inequality. They’re happy to attack whistleblowers at the service of the deep state (the only reason some of them criticize it now is because they think it’s politically biased, as opposed to the enormous power it wields).

The vast majority of marginalized people, including myself, don’t believe that mainstream gun culture favors our freedom. It’s exclusively authoritarian, made by and for traditionalists, nationalists, and others like them. These people want to regulate what kind of marriage is legitimate, what bathrooms trans and non-binary people can use, whether their kids are gay or straight, who can come into the country, and so on. At their worst, they’ll kill us themselves. The idea that those same people will stop LARPing the American Revolution and actually fight tyranny today is hilarious. Nobody believes it.

It’s terrible, because the core argument is correct. Taking guns away from the public and leaving the state with the authority to use them is terrifying. The state is always the greatest purveyor of violence. In the US, where police regularly profile and kill black people for the most trival bullshit, robbing them of even the slightest chance of an equal playing field is incredibly dangerous. The old Black Panther Party was able to prevent police violence against black people by open-carrying guns, and because of this, conservatives at the time were strong proponents of gun control. Liberals love to quote Ronald Reagan on the topic …

Americans don’t go around carrying guns with the idea they’re using them to influence other Americans. There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons. 

… but either don’t know or gloss over the fact that he was justifying a racist law, passed in response to the Black Panther Party resisting racist police.

We see the same reactionary underbelly of gun control today. The justification behind New York’s stop-and-frisk law “is to disarm likely suspects, although it has become a general law-and-order measure, particularly to enforce gun laws.” Existing laws, especially stop-and-frisk, disproportionately target black people. As much as authoritarians of different stripes would like to claim otherwise, laws are not neutral in practice. We are socialized into hierarchies. The existence of law is proof enough; the idea that we can isolate law in a vacuum, away from hierarchically-defined behavior, is absurd.

Gun control doesn’t just control the distribution of guns. It controls people. And more often than not, it controls marginalized people.

Back in 2012, there were 1,360 militia groups in the US. How many of those do you think were radical? Anti-racist? Anti-fascist? Can you even name one? Whatever answers you came up with, I’m sure they were deeply uncomfortable. This is not a position we want to be in. This is why a radical gun culture is overdue for us. This is why we need individual and communal self-defense. We’ve made some progress with organizations like Redneck Revolt, the John Brown Gun Club, Trigger Warning, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, and probably a bunch of local groups I’m not aware of. But we’re still outgunned. Radicals need to make a complete break with liberalism on this front. That doesn’t mean fetishizing violence, as authoritarians do. It means recognizing that the freedom of one is the freedom of all. It means recognizing that this principle actually means something, and that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to defend it. It means a profound love for your neighbor — no matter what race, gender, or sexuality they are — that transcends any political or philosophical principle, and that love is not the same as being passive.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist no. 54

Forget this foul “capitalism and socialism can coexist” socdem fantasy. If capitalists are exploiting workers, communities, and the environment for accumulation and profit, it’s capitalism. Increasing the size of the welfare state and improving the roads doesn’t change that inherent logic. We need full economic democracy and production for human needs rather than for elite profits.

Realize that burdens are easier shared, and humans aren’t solitary creatures. Remember that living with others you can share resources, share skills, share responsibility.

If you are dreading the idea of living alone, realize you don’t have to.